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This study investigates whether ethnic and other forms of socialdiversity affect militarization of society. Recent scholarshipin economics finds that high diversity leads to lower provisionof public goods. At the same time, many conflict studies findthat highly diverse societies face a lower risk of civil war,as opposed to relatively more homogenous populations. The authorsexplore whether diversity prompts governments to militarizeheavily in order to prevent armed conflict, which would thencrowd out spending on other public goods in a `guns versus butter'trade-off. Thus, `preventive militarization' would explain bothoutcomes. Yet the authors find the opposite: higher levels ofethnic diversity predict lower levels of militarization. Ifhigh diversity lowers the hazard of civil war, as many find,then it does not happen via preventive militarization. If diversesocieties spend less on public goods, then this is not becausethey are crowded out by security spending. The results supportthose who suggest that diversity may, in fact, pose a lowersecurity threat to states, since it is highly likely that statesfacing potential social strife would prioritize state militarization.